Seaway and Broadwater Report Wednesday 18th May

Conditions

• Wind: SW - S 5-20 knots
• Preceeding 3 Days Wind : SW-S  5-20 knots
• Swell: 1 m SSE Swell
• Water Clarity 1-1.5.0m
• Tide : BOM: Low tide at 02.47 am, High tide at 08.33am  ( 0.14-1.24)
• Time Fished: 02.00am to 09.30am
• Moon Phase: 1 days after the full moon.
• Barometer 1026.4-1028.5
• Water Temp 21.3-22.3 Degrees C

Notes

Sunny, lots of hardyheads in the broadwater.  Schools of GT's feeding close to wavebreak, and in the channel leading to Crab Is.  Moon showing all night.

Report

Today I wanted to test the viability of  hardyheads as a livie replacement for pike so we spent some time castnetting them in the shallows, that took a while because they were quite spread out and we only managed one or two every few throws.  Once we had 30 or so in the livewell, we moved into the seaway for a fish.  the moon was up and in full bloom and my experience is that the fish in the seaway just don't feed when that happens.  Today was no exception and even the hardys were ignored so we moved back into the broadwater to try and get some pike around the bridges and jetties.   That plan didn't work either, all we managed was some small tailor(which went back).  We moved back into the seaway for dawn.

We found some fish occasionally busting up on the north wall flats which were Queenfish between 35 & 40cm.  We caught 4 of those and lost a few others and managed a couple of tailor in mid 40's all on 20gram twisties.  They went off the bite and we moved back into the seaway.  Occasionally schools of GT's were popping up and busting into schools of Hardyheads, but not for long and we were just that little bit too late every time.  Some of the fly guys who were close when the schools popped up got a couple of nice fish though.  We did get a couple of bigeyes at the junction close to Crab Is.  Once they quieted we moved off to try and get a few pike and we managed 4 before we had to leave to catch the top of the tide.

Back at the seaway for the top of the tide, we used a mix of hardys and pike to see how they compared.  The pike were eaten pretty much instantly but the hardys took quite a while to get eaten and hookups were difficult.  We managed a couple of undersize jewies between 60 & 65cm and a couple of mid 40's tailor.  I did get smashed by something big that took me straight back into the rocks and shredded the leader.  While we were drifting around I saw a big prawn free swimming on the surface and scooped him up in the environet.  I put him straight down and he was eaten in about 10 seconds, by another jewie about 60cm.   By now the wind had picked up, so we used the last of the hardys and called it a day.

So a few different fish caught today, hardys are obviously not a good replacement for pike or yellowtail/slimies on the north wall but I'll be looking at using them in other areas in the future.  Plenty of fish feeding on the surface today but you had to be in the right place to get them.